Salisbury University to receive $8 million gift

Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun

Salisbury University announced Thursday the receipt of an $8 million donation — tied for the largest in its history — from the Guerrieri Family Foundation. The funds will help develop a new Academic Commons area on the Eastern Shore campus.

The $116 million project, which includes a new library and Delmarva research center, will be named after Patricia R. Guerrieri, a Salisbury alumna who studied elementary education in the 1950s. She died in 2010. Her family ran Showell Farms, a poultry processing business with five plants in four states, for decades until Perdue Farms acquired the company in 1995.

The Perdue family, through the Arthur W. Perdue Foundation, also donated $8 million to the school in 2006. It was used to fund the Franklin P. Perdue School of Business.